Digital Art
History - A Subject in Transition: Opportunities and Problems

Wlodek Witek National Library of Norway, Oslo

With Camera to India, Iran and Afghanistan: Access to Multimedia
Sources of the Explorer, Professor Dr. Morgenstierne
(1892-1975)

Keywords: Georg Morgenstierne, Afghanistan, digitisation, multimedia

Georg Morgenstierne (1892 - 1978) was Professor of Indo-Iranian languages at
the University of Oslo, Norway. His bibliography lists 221 published books and
articles. The National Library of Norway, Oslo and the Institute of
East-European and Oriental Languages at the Univerity of Oslo have joined in to
create a multimedia database containing source materials from Morgenstierne's
study tours to isolated areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iran. The
archive of some 3500 items contains primarily photographs, though sound
recordings, moving images and sketches are also included. Some of this material
records the last known traces of an ancient Asian culture before it succumbed
to Islam.

Only a handful of the University employees had access to the grey steel cabinet
in the seminar room of the Indo-Iranian Library at the Oslo campus. Even fewer
knew what the many yellowed envelopes contained. Knut Kristiansen, lecturer in
Hindi and Indian literature, kept a watchful eye on his old mentor's papers,
the Morgenstierne archive. As he approached retirement in the 1990s his concern
for the archive made him act. Something had to be done about the long-term
preservation and access to the numerous photographs and other records from
South Asia brought to the Institute by the respected linguist, Georg Valentin
von Munthe af Morgenstierne (Fig. 1). The Institute of East European and
Oriental Languages sought a partnership with Norway's major library, The
University of Oslo Library (now The National Library of Norway) in order to
find a way of preserving this important collection. A deal was struck that a
database for the picture material would be created by a joint effort and the
actual collection would become the responsibility of The National Library when
the work was finished. During the process the condition of the archive was to
be evaluated and necessary measures taken to ensure its physical preservation.
It was believed that the Library had the means and expertise to cope with the
tasks of both preservation and future access.

Fig. 1. Georg
Morgenstierne at fieldwork in Afghanistan.

Geography and politics

Although Georg Morgenstierne travelled extensively throughout South Asia, from
Sri Lanka to Iran, by far the most unique were his visits to the inaccessible
areas of The Hindu Kush Mountains. The high, snow covered passes and dangerous
roads have helped to keep a large mountain area isolated for centuries. Access
to the valleys was controlled from the east by the ruler of Chitral, the
Mehtar, while the notorious reputation of the mountain people, the Kafirs, as
neighbouring Muslims called the unbelievers, did their best to scare off any
intruders from any other side of Kafiristan. Kafiristan, or the Land of the
Infidel, lay to the East of Kabul, North of Jalalabad, South of Uzbekistan and
West of Chitral (Fig. 2). The area, known for its deposits of lapis lazuli,
served as a buffer zone between Afghanistan and colonial India fearing attack
from the Russian Empire in the North. Undoubtedly, Kafiristan posed a great
threat to the stability of the region and thus, unwillingly, became a territory
of the Great Game at the end of the 19th century. Better control of the north
border of India became a high priority for the Crown. As to the ruler of Kabul,
he wanted to expand his influence as far east as possible and convert 'the wild
tribes' who for so many centuries molested the neighbouring Muslims with
numerous bloody attacks and looting.

Fig. 2. Map of
Kafiristan, 1880.

History and conflict

The year 1896 was to become fateful for the Kafir culture. It was then
that the Durand Line was drawn to limit India's influence over the unexplored
Kafiristan. The Line is still the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,
north of the Khyber Pass. Shortly after the Durand Line was drawn the Emir of
Kabul, Abdur Rahman, successfully conducted a military campaign, sacking
Kafiristan and imposing Islam onto the conquered tribes. Kafiristan was invaded
several times and eventually stripped of its cultural identity. Altars were
burned, priests murdered, boys kidnapped and conscripted to military school in
Kabul. Only several hundred Kati Kafirs (the Red Kafirs of the Bashgal Valley)
managed to flee across the border. The Mehtar of Chitralís gave them
conditional permission to settle in the neighbouring valleys of Rumbur,
Bumboret and Urtsun, which were then inhabited by the Kalasha tribe (the Black
Kafirs). Being so deeply uprooted, the Kati refugees willingly converted to
Islam and by the mid 1930s all had given up their old beliefs (Fig. 3).
Effectively, only the Kalash people who lived on the Chitral side of the border
remained unconverted. All what used to be known as Kafiristan on the Afghan
side of the border became the Land of Enlightment, Nuristan.

Fig. 3. The
chief Bagashai and the chanting priest Kareik, the last of the Afghan Kati
'unbelievers' (Red Kafirs) and priests. By 1935, six years after this
photograph was taken, both were dead.

Exploration

Georg Morgenstierne was clearly attracted by the mysterious stories of Rudyard
Kipling, such as Kim. Like the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, he
was driven to search and discover what was yet unknown. His linguistic
background was a good start, but it was his marriage to Agnes Konow that made
his dream of becoming a discoverer come true. Agnes was brought up in India.
She was a daughter of the Norwegian Indologist Sten Konow (1867-1948) who was
instrumental in two monumental publications: The Archaeological Survey of
India by John Marshall (1906-07) and The Linguistic Survey of
India by George A. Grierson (1903-28). Morgenstierne's letters to his wife
give us a valuable insight into what it was like to be on a linguistic mission
to the lands where few Europeans ever ventured.1

Nuristan's unknown languages

A
brief political thaw in Afghanistan allowed Morgenstierne to obtain a permit
and visit the country for the first time in 1924. He started his journey from
Peshawar in an automobile with his hired Pathan assistant, Yasin Khan, as well
as a Russian and an Italian. In those days the dangerous road from Peshawar,
through Jalalabad to Kabul claimed many victims to crime. Even today the road
still retains its bad reputation. The middle leg of the trip across the Kunar
River continued on the back of an elephant, at times a more reliable means of
transport. Once in Kabul, Morgenstierne set to work straight away. Despite a
favourable political climate in Afghanistan, the linguist was still prohibited
from leaving a closely defined perimeter outside of Kabul. His faithful Yasin
spotted the first Kafir-language speakers in the bazaar and persuaded them to
speak in their native tongues in front of the linguist. The Nuristani from the
Kabul marketplaces were to provide a valuable first insight into the complex
patchwork of the unknown languages of Nuristan 2. Morgenstierne was to wait for over 25 years before he could
return to Afghanistan and travel to Nuristan proper, which he did for the first
time in 1949. His second linguistic expedition, however, started in 1929. Only
Chitral was open to his linguistic research and strict orders were given not to
cross the Afghanistan border. This trip and years of comparative studies that
followed resulted in a proposed map of the distribution of the many
surprisingly ancient languages in this area (Fig. 4). 3 Morgenstierne argued that the Nuristani
(Kafir) family of languages that includes Kati, Prasun and Ashkun, was possibly
formed even before the separation of the Iranian from the Indian language over
3000 years ago. Highly controversial at the time, this claim remains his most
important discovery.

Fig. 4 Nuristan
(Chitral and Nuristan language distribution map)

Ancient languages and religions

The ancient origin of the Kafir culture is an indication of the age of
the indigenous peoples and their northern origin. The Kafir religion resembles
the Vedic religion of the Aryan invaders of the Indian continent who destroyed
the rural Harappa culture of the Indus Valley around 1500 BC. It is believed
that the Kafirs could be descendants of the Aryan invaders who stayed in the
Hindu Kush Mountains.

Tough traveller

Throughout his career Morgenstierne did his fieldwork in the East on eight
occasions, spanning a period of nearly 50 years of exploration. He climbed high
mountain passes, visited feared tribes in the jungle of Assam, rode horses,
donkeys and elephants, moved by car, steamer and airplane, but when it really
mattered just set off on foot like a typical mountain-loving Norwegian. On one
of his last trips to Afghanistan, when he was 76, he was deeply hurt for having
been refused on grounds of his advanced age "permission to enter Nuristan".

Records of a disappearing world

Morgenstierne's trip of 1929 was by far his most exceptional. We are today in
possession of a surprising wealth of information few researchers know about.
Scarcely any other serious traveller before him brought so much diverse
documentation, not to mention moving images and audio, of the Kafir culture.
Nearly all the material symbols of the Kafir culture were destroyed by the
invading Afghan army in 1896. A few trophies, rare wooden sculptures, found
their way to Kabul Museum and a total of 18 were recorded there in the 1960s
4. After the Soviet invasion of
1978, the civil war of the 1990s and recent Taliban rule, the museum is a ruin
with only a fraction of the mainly Islamic collection surviving. The wooden
Kafir art was probably used as firewood.

Ancestral effigies

The expressive wooden figures were meaningful in a social context.
They symbolized social status of prominent individuals or represented deities.
A mounted horseman seated on a twin-headed animal represented the highest
status achievable for a tribe member and was earned either by throwing lavish
feasts to at least one village or by becoming a successful assassin. The
ancestral figures (gandau) were raised after death and placed in a group on the
outer perimeter of the burial ground, where coffins were left unburied (Fig.
5).

Fig. 5. Effigies
of Kafir ancestors by a burial ground.

The skill of woodcarving lay exclusively in the hands of the bari, the lowest
ranking artisan caste of the Kafirs. Smaller effigies (kundik) would be raised
in the fields where a symbolic figure of a standing, seated or mounted ancestor
could watch over and protect the crops of his descendants from the high
position, perched in a simple construction of stone and timber. Although Kafir
culture was strongly dominated by men, women also could gain high social rank
and be depicted seated or standing after death.

Altars and shrines

The few altars and shrines remaining today can only be found in the Kalash
valleys of Birir, Bumboret and Rumbur in Chitral. Neither Muslims nor women can
approach the sites for fear of 'polluting' them. Altars in the name of the
highest god Imra (or Mara) used to be found by every village where sacrifices
were made. The altars to Imra consisted of a stone boulder and a flagstone
placed as a tabletop where purifying fires of juniper would burn during
frequent sacrificial ceremonies. The stone altars are all gone, even in
Chitral. A shrine to another powerful god has been preserved in the oak forest
where the god, Sajigor, has his place of worship. Mahandeo-dur (altar to the
god Mahandeo) can be also found in secluded sites. These sites display similar
layout features. They are simple timber and stone constructions with carved
vertical and horizontal patterned wood, crowned with protruding long-necked
horse heads. The area in front would normally include a number of raised,
richly carved poles, each set up in memory of the generous members of the tribe
who sponsored feasts. There would also be a hearth for a sacrificial fire in
the middle. During important religious occasions a priest would sacrifice
bread, cheese, fruit, butter or animal blood. In earlier times bulls were
offered. Today, since other domestic animals are no longer plentiful, only
precious goats are offered to the gods.

Household utensils and furniture

Practically any wooden surface was an excuse for carved decoration.
These were always produced by the bari caste of craftsmen. The emblems and
symbols cut into bowls and doors had to reflect the social status of the owner
for whom they were made. Chairs in Kafiristan were not as common as in other
parts of the world. In fact, the use of chairs outdoors was strictly restricted
to only those who earned that right. Women could also attain such a high
status, but indoors no such rule had to be observed. Kafir chairs were made in
several styles according to area and/or tribe (see Klimburg). The 'horn-chairs'
from the Waigal Valley especially attracted the attention of researchers as
soon as they had been discovered by Morgiensterne in the village of Kegal in
1949. The figures of mating couples carved on the back of one of the two chairs
are extremely rare (see Jones). Such figures seem to also form the high 'horns'
of the furniture (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. The
Kegal chairs discovered and photographed in 1949 (detail of a larger
photograph).

Striking, horned head-dresses crowning the heads of Kati women were
commonplace in the Bashgal Valley up till 1896. There are several descriptions
and photographs of them (see Jones). The earliest descriptions are from the
late 1800s and the most detailed record with an illustration was provided by
George Robertson in his book The Kafirs of Hindu-Kush (see Robertson).
These peculiarly shaped woollen caps had four long horns made of human hair.
When a four-horned goat was born in the herd, it was considered a good omen, a
sign of favour from the gods. This is what the neighbouring Kalash tribe
believed. Today, there are two known specimens in public collections, one in
the Oslo Ethnographic Museum and the other in the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London (Fig. 7). A variant of a horned head-dress (with short horns and no
human hair) is in the Graziozi Collection at the Anthropological Museum in
Florence and another one in the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark.

The bulk of Morgenstierne's travel records is in the form of some 3000
photographs. The earliest are contact prints from postcard-size negative film
from the 1920s; the latest, from the 1970s, are made on colour slide film and
Polaroid direct positive colour paper. On one of his early trips to India and
Chitral in 1929, he took a movie camera and audio recording equipment with him.
The movie archive consists of over 100 short clips from a total of 20 minutes
of silent movie. There are about forty speech recordings of about 30 seconds
each.

All the images, even some dubious landscapes and poor quality images are
included in the database. It was possible to identify all images, even those
with little detail. It was felt that this 'all-inclusive' approach was the only
acceptable way to approach a serious researcher's archive of images from little
known parts of the world. This way the original material was spared unnecessary
handling and be kept in conditions suitable for photographic archives. All
images were put in transparent, archival polyester sleeves, chronologically
sorted and stored in archival quality boxes in an air-conditioned room at the
Norway National Library, Oslo. Access to the database is unrestricted and free
of charge.

Certain interesting cultural aspects of the collection may seem to be
too well hidden in the large number of items represented. Some researchers may
also be inexperienced in the use of search tools provided by databases. It was
therefore thought useful, if not entirely necessary, to create a few web pages
in order to emphasize some records (Fig. 8). Subjects of dance, music and
sacrifice were therefore singled out and some recent video, audio and
photographs were added. These are accessed from the homepage. The website and
all records are written both in Norwegian and English.

The project team

The project team was formed in 1997 as a small group of four
specialists, but ended in 2000 with just two. None of the group worked full
time. Knut Kristiansen's role needs to be emphasized as he was crucial to the
success of content identification. He both knew G. Morgenstierne well, was
familiar with some of the Indian languages and had visited Chitral in the
recent years. His tragic and unexplained death in 1999 was a hard blow, yet his
professional contribution had already been so fruitful that the rest of the
project was not jeopardised.

The prototype software, MediaFinder was used for the database input.
It was designed by Kolbjørn Aambø for the Oslo University Library
in 1990, when it was created for the Nansen picture network-archive (intranet),
the library's first picture database that gave access to a sizable collection
of photographs.

Elisabeth Eide, Head of the National Library collections, made the
Morgenstierne project possible. She was also responsible for proof-reading and
the budget.

Technical notes

Scanning the images was spread over time and was carried out in-house
by hired personnel. Digitisation of the moving images was carried out
externally in 1998 from only one existing film copy, the original nitrate film
being lost. All the audio recordings, also copies of wax cylinders, now lost,
were copied from 78 rpm copy records to digital audio and converted to
QuickTime files. The audio and moving image editing was done by the project
team who were familiar with the content of the whole collection. The Library
phased out its Apple Mac equipment by 1999 and the core material is now
editable through direct access to the Trip database, now available to world
wide web users.